Additional Advocacy Resources

Connectivity by CQ Roll Call: Help for Associations, Nonprofits and Advocacy Professionals

50 Stealable Grassroots Marketing Campaigns Ideas from professional grassroots marketing campaigns, with verified success metrics provide confidence and ideas for optimizing advocacy, growing donations or enhancing membership growth and engagement in local projects. Includes “1,190 Tweets to Congress in Two Weeks” – ALA’s 2016 campaign to encourage Members of Congress to support school library programs by reauthorizing ESEA – and recommended by ALA to state library associations.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS), a division of the Library of Congress, is Congress’s think tank, researching and compiling nonpartisan reports on a governmental issues. This site, with bi­-partisan support, make these reports available to the public. Updated regularly.

More than 228,000 hours of video (just about everything that has ever aired on C-SPAN), updated on a daily basis. Historical content includes debates, speeches, rallies, and more. Users can create custom video clips to save and share. Essential.

Keeping Your Library Neutral

Keeping yourself and your collection politically neutral ensures that you are in good ethical standing and exemplifies one of the missionsof libraries: to provide the greatest amount of access to as much diverse materials as possible.

Public Libraries Online blogger Andrew Hart offers advice on how to avoid conveying perceived bias to library patrons and community that the library is for or against political parties, policies or particular candidates running for office.

Election Resources, Voter Information and Lobbying

Election Resources collects reference resources to assist citizens with voter registration and ballot choices. The following resources have been selected by WVLS staff as references to assist citizens with voter registration and ballot choices.

On June 30, 2016, what was formerly called the Government Accountability Board was divided into the Wisconsin Elections Commission and the Wisconsin Ethics Commission. Learn more about the transition here.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission maintains this site to assist citizens with voter registration questions, including photo ID rules, general voting information, polling place locations, sample ballots, and what to expect at the polling place. Toll free 1-866-VOTE-WIS

This site allows Wisconsin citizens to sign in and view a list of elections they have voted in, check and update current registration information, request or track an absentee ballot, identify location and hours of their polling place, and see what’s on the ballot for an upcoming election.

The mission of the Wisconsin Ethics Commission is to enhance representative democracy by furthering Wisconsin’s tradition of clean and open government through the administration of Wisconsin’s campaign finance, lobbying, and ethics laws, and through the dissemination of information to the public.

This website includes

Campaign Finance Information System, including registration of committees and conduits

Eye on Lobbying, including who is lobbying for what organization

Independent Voter Information Websites

Ballotpedia is the online encyclopedia of American politics and elections with offices located in Middleton, WI. Ballotpedia “content includes neutral, accurate and verifiable information on government officials and the offices they hold, political issues and public policy, elections, candidates, and the influencers of politics” covered in over 220,000 encyclopedic articles.

Vote Smart’s mission is to provide free, factual, unbiased information on candidates and elected officials to all Americans. Largely staffed by data entry volunteers, the site is searchable by the name of an elected official and returns biographical information as well as votes, positions, ratings by different special interest groups

Rock the Vote is the largest nonprofit and nonpartisan organization in the United States driving youth the polls. Every day, nearly 12,000 Americans turn 18. This website is geared to those first-time voters.

This website co-sponsored by Wisconsin Public Television and Wisconsin Public Radio includes biographical information on individual candidates for US Senate and Congressional races as well as state legislative races, news and political blogs. Additional Teacher Resources are included for new 18-year-old voters.

WVLS Libraries Transform Project

WVLS librarians are continuing to provide legislators serving districts that include all or portions of WVLS counties with opportunities to learn more about the way Wisconsin libraries transform their communities. Funding to support WVLS and its sister public library systems across Wisconsin is appropriated through the biennial state budget process. A new state budget will be written in 2017.

The Wisconsin Library Association (WLA) began its Libraries Transform! poster project in 2016 as part of the association’s 125th Anniversary, and as a vehicle for building relationships between legislators and libraries. WLA’s goal is to create and maintain a complete set of legislative posters for display in local libraries. The project is based on the American Library Association’s Libraries Transform Campaign.

(Below) Senator Jerry Petrowski at the downtown Wausau branch of Marathon County Public Library with Director Ralph Illick on the day the Senator’s poster photo was taken.

The large library card featured on each poster includes logos from all the public library systems across Wisconsin. It is symbolic of the fact that legislative districts frequently include portions of counties from more than one public library system.

Completed Posters are available for these WVLS area Legislators: Representatives Bernier, Edming, Felzkowski, Kulp, Mursau, Snyder, Spiros, Swearingen, and Senators Petrowski and Tiffany. A poster for Senator Moulton is pending.

Additional copies of each poster may be purchased for display at local libraries (a friendly welcome when legislators return for a listening session or office hours) for $20 by contacting the WLA office at 608-245-3640 or wla@wisconsinlibraries.org .

Send us your “Libraries Transform!” News!

Do you have stories or photos of legislators’ visits to your library to share? Do you have questions about the Libraries Tranform! poster project? Contact Kris Adams Wendt at kawendt@wvls.org.